


Burning Blue Matter Bright

by raven_aorla



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Steam Powered Giraffe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Vice Quadrant - Steam Powered Giraffe (Album)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Trans Character, Captain Marvel (2019) Spoilers, Crossover, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendly to the SPG unfamiliar, Fusion, Gen, Mild Robotic Self-Harm, Self-Blame, Slightly Flirty Spine, Team Up, The Tesseract (Marvel), canon suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 18:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19025587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: It's amazing how long it took anyone to realize that generations of the Walter family, now known mainly for their endearing robot musical act, have been messing with Tesseract energy all along.





	Burning Blue Matter Bright

**Author's Note:**

> If this were a short film, we'd have ["Commander Cosmo"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL6iNa-Or4I) play over the opening credits. Clicking the link will also show you the best canon portrait of him. My inspiration for this fic was listening to it on repeat and realizing how few alterations you'd need to make it a song about Captain Marvel.
> 
> Other optional links if you want more background or to brush up on details:
> 
> [The general SPG lore timeline.](https://steampoweredgiraffe.com/index.php/lore/#1448060529530-d4926eca-1147)
> 
> [The Vice Quadrant timeline.](https://steampoweredgiraffe.com/index.php/vqtimeline/) Note that this fic takes place in a third universe (i.e. the MCU), which is distinct from the two covered in the album's narrative but shares many elements.
> 
>  [For a very good illustration of Peter VI, not only what he looks like but how much of a dork he is, I present this page of the official SPG comic (non spoiler-y).](https://steampoweredgiraffe.com/comic/comic/page-28/)

No sooner had Carol found an appropriate planet for the refugee Skrulls than they informed her they’d picked just up an energy signal almost identical to hers, but “emanating from deep inside the gravity well of a dark star”, as they put it. Rogue occurrences of Tesseract radiation could be big trouble for this galaxy and beyond, so with their help she set to work retrieving the source.

As complex and challenging an undertaking it ended up being in order not to blow the star up in the process, it was nothing compared to her surprise when she ended up pulling out a person. Or at least something person-shaped, wearing a cape and helmet of ultraviolet light that cast a purplish-blue tint over his face, and a tattered white spacesuit of a relatively primitive design. His eyes were moving around in a way that showed not only life but awareness. The icing on top of the weird cake was that the bulky suit he wore was still emblazoned with the unmistakably Terran, unmistakably English letters N A S A, with a faded American flag logo.

He locked tired eyes with her and tapped into the frequencies of her suit's communicator. “Ma’am, or whatever your rank is, I was trying to die.”

She flew to him and put an arm around his drooping shoulders. “Either Captain Marvel or Captain Carol Danvers works for me.”

“I prefer being called Commander Walter.” He looked her up and down. Both of them glowing, his light cool and hers warm, and hanging in the void. It looked like he was trying to smile politely but had forgotten how. 

She smiled back. “Hi, Commander Walter. That clearly wasn’t working. The dying thing, I mean. Care to go somewhere with a bit more atmosphere and talk? I won’t keep you if you want to go your own way afterwards.” 

When he nodded - though he didn’t acknowledge the pun - she led him to a nearby large moon. Farell-64 supported prairies and fern-filled wetlands inhabited by a few species of arthropods, with oceans full of fish-like creatures. A friendly place, lower gravity than ideal but with enough oxygen to allow blue sky and water. There was no sapient life for her to worry about if Commander Walter turned out to be unfriendly and they had to fight. She and the Skrulls had considered it for settlement, but decided it didn’t have enough resources for something permanent. 

They sat on lichen-covered rocks next to a quiet pond. Ever since she’d tapped into her full powers, Carol had discovered that she no longer required food and water to survive, but she wouldn’t have minded a picnic here. She pushed away thoughts of who she’d really like to have that picnic with.

Commander Walter stared into the middle distance in her direction rather than looking at her. “Did it hit you too?”

“Tesseract energy?”

He looked confused. “The blue matter explosion.”

“Well, it _was_ blue. Where did yours come from?”

He launched into an explanation about his grandfather, Colonel Peter A. Walter I, bringing home mysterious crystals he’d found on a trip to Europe and cultivating something he called “blue matter” in his laboratory, and done all sorts of wonderful but dangerous things with it. Walter Robotics’ historical rival, Becile Industries, had stolen some of their tech and caused an explosion in 1950. It killed his uncle and ripped through space-time to a moment in 1963. He, Peter A. Walter IV, had been in orbit studying the resulting gate when something very bright and blue hit him right in the chest…

“Becile Industries had a lot of political influence and buried the story of what happened to me, even after I saved our planet a few times,” he concluded. “That’s what happened in our universe, anyway. According to someone I talked to later on, an expert in dimension-hopping, since that moment on there have been other versions of me and everyone personally linked to me. We fragmented across realities. Maybe you did, too.”

“Huh. Maybe.” She watched some legged fishy things scurry around in the shallow water. “How’d you get from there to where I found you?”

He sighed. “You seem cheerful, so I don’t think what happened to you happened very long ago. Our minds aren’t meant for it. I can’t bear infinity and what it makes you lose. Who it makes you lose.”

That hit harder than she expected. _Had it been kinder, not to tell Maria that she remembered something that seemed too distant, too someone-else, to ever have again? Had it been better that she hadn’t promised to come back? Would Maria move on? Could Carol move on?_

“I find stuff to do,” Carol said, propping her chin in her hand. “People to save. It doesn’t matter if you find hanging around home painful or awkward. There are a lot of planets out there. I don’t know if I’m going to live forever, but there’s always something people like us can do. You can come along on my next mission, if you want. I wouldn’t mind learning some tricks.”

He thought about it, then shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but I think I’ll go find the person I talked about, the one who knows about jumping through dimensions. I owe him a favor. Then I’ll see how I feel, since the multiverse doesn’t seem to want to let me go yet.”

She ached a little at how resigned he sounded. “What’s his name? Sounds like a useful contact.”

“Ravaxis Starburner. He’s not always available in this universe, but as you said, it’s good to have something to do.” 

“Do you want to know my story?” It seemed polite to offer a summary.

“I don’t want to be rude, but not really.”

She shrugged. “Fine by me. Saves us some time.” 

Commander Walter got to his feet and extended a hand. “Thank you. If that wasn’t going to work, I wouldn’t have enjoyed spending eternity stuck in a star.”

Carol shook his hand. “Feel free to say hello if we bump into each other again.” She didn’t get the sense that he’d want some sort of way to signal her on purpose. Lone wolf. Space wolf, but a lone one.

“I will.” He let go. “I owe you something, too. Are you in contact with Earth these days?”

“Sort of, why?”

“If...if Earth does need help involving blue matter or inter-dimensional rifts and portals, tell your contact to try finding Walter Manor in San Diego, California. Tell them to ask for the latest Peter Alexander Walter.” Then Commander Walter closed his eyes and rocketed back into outer space.

 

**** MANY YEARS AND THREE GAUNTLET SNAPS LATER ****

 

Nick Fury turned to Danvers and asked quietly, “You sure this is our guy?”

“His great-uncle said so,” she told him, leaning back in her chair with her hands laced together behind her head. She was dressed in civvies for her multi-day stay back Earthside, jeans and a simple black top and leather jacket. 

They were all sat around a conference table in a newly dusted-off and refurbished laboratory. Hope Van Dyne was there because this was her family’s lab, transported to San Diego and expanded again, plus her knowledge of quantum physics was useful in this situation. Scott Lang was there because he might be of use in the coming mission, plus Ant-Man and the Wasp were a package deal these days. They weren’t the only couple to have become a bit clingy after being reunited post-Snap. Wanda Maximoff was there because of her association with a different Infinity Stone, and also as insurance in case this turned into a fight and two sets of Space Stone-based energy canceled each other out or something. Finally, Bruce Banner was there because he’d noticed the problem they were trying to solve in the first place. 

Fury was by nature and experience a cynical bastard, but Peter Walter VI also wasn’t very impressive so far, and nothing like what Danvers had described meeting in some distant solar system. Walter VI was a pale, gawky young man with brownish-auburnish hair, depending on lighting, with a gray and black sweater-vest. He hadn’t removed the odd welder’s mask covering his face since his arrival. Instead of metal, it looked like some sort of wood, and instead of a slit for the eyes it had a central keyhole shape that didn’t reveal any features. Currently he was unloading a seemingly endless number of mechanical bits and bobs out of his satchel and onto a tray in front of him. Yes, Fury was mindful of books and covers - he wasn't writing him off immediately, but this was the head of a family who took what was potentially a massive source of power and mostly used it to maintain a cute little robot band. 

“Excuse me, who are you?” Maximoff asked the bodyguard(?) Walter VI had brought with him, who had taken the chair next to him.

The metallic man, silver with black accents, tipped his wide-brimmed black hat. In a rich baritone voice, he said, “Hello, everyone. I’m the Spine. I have a titanium alloy spine. I’m mostly a musical automaton, but I have served other purposes. Today I’m here to help him get in as little trouble as possible.” Then he smiled with realistic white teeth. He couldn’t settle backwards in his chair because of the fins coming out of his back, piercing through his striped suit, but he adjusted his red necktie and leaned forward on the table in a deferential but still easygoing fashion. 

“Nice to meet you, the Spine,” Wanda said, staring intently at him. Oh, right. This was a handsome robot, probably running on a battery derived from an Infinity Stone. Though it was unlikely he knew about Vision, the Spine seemed intrigued at the attention in a very human way.

“I don’t need babysitting, but I do like having assistance.” Walter VI was now using a screwdriver to attach some of the metal pieces together. 

Lang fidgeted in his seat. “Mr. Walter, if you’re wearing a protective mask to build that thing, is it safe for the rest of us to be so close?”

“This lab has rooms for containing more hazardous work,” Van Dyne offered.

Walter VI looked up. “Oh, this mask isn’t ever to protect me from what I’m doing. Also the thing I’m doing right now is super duper safe, all’s well! I’m setting up my steam-powered holographic display.”

“Then what is your mask for?” Fury asked, now more on edge.

“The mask is to protect everyone else from me.” It was hard to get a read on him, but Walter VI sounded way too damn casual to be saying shit like that. 

“Blue matter radiation can cause humans a lot of health problems,” the Spine said. “Anyone who spends too much time maintaining our cores starts showing signs of it real soon. Do you need some water?”

“Yes, please.” The Spine handed Walter VI an aluminum water bottle he’d left on the floor, and poured a few drops into a receptacle on his gear-covered rectangle. The thing churned to life with a tea kettle whistle sound and produced a flickering map of the trouble spot in Peru suspended above it. More basic than Stark tech in many ways, but running on steam was its own achievement.

Banner gestured with a big green finger. “So have you noticed the anomalous readings as well?”

“Yip yip, and it’s gonna be a doozy. It’ll be nice having backup this go-round. I used blue matter tools to mend a tear in the fabric of space-time by myself back in 2013…”

“The rest of you are welcome for that, by the way,” the Spine put in, giving Walter VI a fond shoulder pat.

“Spine, some of these people restored the Vanished. They gave us Michael Reed back. It more than cancels out.” 

“Fair enough. Go on.”

“As I was saying, I mended the tear, but it didn’t go smoothly.” Walter VI made an “explosion” gesture with both hands. “Hit me right in the whole face area. The hospital was confused, to say the least. My dad, Peter A. Walter V, helped stabilize me. It was a much smaller tear in the fabric of space-time than this one is going to be, too!”

“You sound excited,” Danvers said, raising an eyebrow, as if she wasn’t an adrenaline junkie herself.

“I spent five years trying to figure out how to reverse the Vanishing, then it turned out I didn’t need to, and since then I got the family business in full swing again and I’ve upgraded the all robots several times and have visited four new dimensions and finally found an intern who didn’t run away screaming and now I’m _totes_ bored, my homies.” He expanded the holographic display and gave it a shove. It drifted over to Banner. “Show me on the gizmo what you saw, Dr. BB&H.”

The conversation got very technical for awhile. Fury followed the gist of it but noticed a glaring omission. “We need to know more about that face of yours, Mr. Walter.”

For a moment, there was an awkward silence like everyone was expecting Walter VI to storm off in a huff or turn antagonistic. Then he cracked his knuckles. “Hazardous lab then?”

Van Dyne led the way. Lang hustled over to Fury to babble quietly, “I told Bruce this already, but I went in Walter Manor with Hope to be the first to approach Peter VI, right, and we used the scanner Danvers gave us? That place is oozing with Space Stone influence. It's diluted, but it’s warped the inside of the house so it looks like a Tim Burton movie meets an M.C. Escher poster. The Walters use blue matter for everything, like Wakandans use vibranium. Or like people who aren’t great at home repair use duct tape. Peter Walter I probably found a few rocks that got soaked in Tesseract radiation years before HYDRA snagged the actual thing.”

“Eavesdropping is rude, so I’m telling you I have excellent hearing,” the Spine said calmly, turning his head 180 degrees and startling the bejeezus out of Lang. His helmet snapped on in reflex, though he pulled himself together rather than actually shrinking. 

****

Peter Alexander Walter the Sixth, whose name Scott did not envy, was in a closed room, standing six feet away from a blank wall, the three normal mortals in the group outside watching through thick glass and listening in through speakers. 

Hope told Fury, “If he breaks my family's lab doing a demonstration on your orders, SHIELD is compensating us.”

Fury grunted stoically. Scott reflected with some wistfulness than he would never be a fraction as much of a badass as him.

Walter VI was telling the three supers, “I wish I could make travel shortcuts in our own dimension, but that’s not what I was working on at the time and that makes all the difference, I guess. Also, when you call me _enhanced_ , it makes me feel like I’ve had vitamins added to me to make me more nutritious.”

“That’s _enriched_ ,” the Spine said. 

“I thought that was _enrobed_.”

“No, that’s when things are covered in chocolate.” 

“English is hard,” Wanda said sympathetically, even as she was doing one of her red-glow-making things with both outstretched hands. “You two have the same energy.”

“I like to think we have totally different vibes, though,” the Spine said, smiling specifically at Wanda.

Walter VI pointed at the Spine in warning. “Easy there. You’ve got enough love songs. Don’t make me wish I’d brought Rabbit.” 

“She would be flirting with the quantum tunnel generator.” 

“Your robots are...interesting,” Banner said. 

Suddenly Walter VI’s stance went from friendly to rigid. Defensive. “I’m only going to show you this if you promise not to touch my family’s robots. None. At all. Otherwise deal’s off and I won’t help you and, and, and I’ll find a way to make all of you seriously regret it.”

“As long as they don’t pull an Ultron, that’s fine,” Fury said loudly to the microphone feeding into the contained area. “Now get on with it.”

He must have sounded sincere enough, because Walter VI went back to his amiable demeanor. “I like to make a distinction between _alternate dimensions_ and _alternate realities_. The second have other versions of everyone in our reality and is the result of a split in a timeline. I try to deal with those as little as possible. Too finicky. But alternate dimensions are places with different rules that are kept separate from us, not by distance, but by barriers beyond what conventional physics can account for. By walls. I was trying to rebuild a wall. I guess I ended up being a door.”

Then Walter VI took off his mask. Blue light beamed out from where his face should have been, punching a hole in midair that grew and grew...

****

“D-d-didja have fun in Peru, Petes?” Rabbit asked Six as soon as she had him all to himself. She’d been anxious about him doing world-saving stuff, even with the Spine there to watch his back (haha), though she hadn’t admitted it to anyone. So when she found out they’d be home soon she miiiiiight have tampered with her own boiler in a fashion more advanced than the Walter Workers were qualified to fix. Right now the Walter Workers were handling some minor dings on the Spine, who never had very serious problems. Pappy had had a better idea of what he was doing when constructing his second “child”. It was tough being a first draft. The OG. 

Anyway, once Six was done hugging his parents and great-aunt and uncle, he’d dropped his suitcase and headed for Lab #9 with Rabbit. Six understood her in a way that none of the others had, except his ancestor who had made her in the first place. None of the others had been able to figure out that she broke down so often because her construction was incomplete and her design been changed at the last minute. He’d gotten her consent and committed to overhauling her body to match her subconscious gender. Right now she was lying down with her hat and goggles off and torso plates unscrewed. She had 100% of his attention and basked in it.

“It was fun,” Six replied, feeling around with a screwdriver and a bare right hand for the gap she’d made when she ripped out a small piece of machinery. “I hadn’t interacted that much with new people in awhile, and I got to watch them fight the monsters that poured through the rift while I was working on patching it, plus I had a video chat with Princess Shuri of Wakanda for a second opinion. She was cool. Might do that again. And I tried ceviche! It was oceany.”

“Good for you!” Rabbit lifted a hand for a high-five, which was understandably denied since his hands were busy. Sixth ate food so rarely after his accident that he considered eating two cherries a “very cherry day”. Not only did he not need to, because he was now like his own robots and could get by with just blue matter and water, but he had to focus real hard in order to put anything in his unmasked face without letting anything come out. Good thing he could poke a straw through his keyhole to drink stuff. 

“How far did you and Zero get on the new choreography for ‘Overdrive’?” Six asked, pulling down a magnifying glass attached to a twisty spring. 

“Bleh, he’s not a very good dancer. Hatchworth was better.” Rabbit blinked her photoreceptors a few times. She worried that oil might drip through them when she asked the next part. It was nice of Pappy to give them that way to show emotions, but sometimes it got inconvenient. “D-d-did you find out anything else about Four? Did that Marvel lady say anything else?”

“No, but I hope you got the subtext that he wasn’t mad at you. Only the Beciles. He tried to protect you and the other ‘bots by saying our tech was stolen, rather than using the specific word ‘robot’. Here we are...you just need a patch. I’ll put a stronger bolt on.”

Rabbit exhaled a wisp of steam. “Do the Avengers want anything else? Didja get paid?”

“I got paid. I also asked for a favor.”

“Ooh.”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Nooooo!”

“Sorry, Rabbit, tricks are for Walters. Um. That sounded funnier in my head.” Six made a throat-clearing noise. “If you want a private chat, you can just ask. I don’t want you hurting yourself.”

She winced. “I’m sorry, I know I’m wasting your time -”

“That’s not what this is about. None of you are a waste of my time, you’re my family. Just as much as my parents or Aunt Wanda and a bit more than Uncle Norman, though don’t tell him that.” He paused. “While we’re here, would you like slightly more dexterous fingers for your keytar playing? I’ve got an idea for that.” 

Four months later, Rabbit was feeding the birds at Pappy’s grave like she did most weeks. The sunset was slipping into dark purple light, casting shadows on the headstones of Peter A. Walter I and his wife Iris. Next to them, Two and his wife Mary. Three, no wife, and confusingly the twin brother of Two, because Pappy’s imagination had only stretched to the mechanical. Then Mark Ray Walter and his wife Judith, the ones who continued the line after his brother Four disappeared into space. Mark and Four’s sister Wanda was still kicking around, but other than helping raise Fifth she didn’t seem interested in kids. Wanda’s first husband, Guy Hottie, was buried here too, killed in the same explosion of Rabbit’s core that eventually smacked into Fourth. Five was alive, but his body and memory weren’t so good these days. He didn’t spend much time out of his room. 

Rabbit missed all of the dead, so much so that she’d get mad about being capable of feelings. The other robots missed them too, but the Spine didn’t come out here as often as she did, and their younger siblings rarely ever had. 

She’d also never seen Six out here, but he approached her, bundled up in his long brown coat that had belonged to Mark but Six thought looked “snazzy vintage”. “Others will be here in a few minutes, but this surprise is mostly for you.”

“Huh?”

He pointed up at the sky. What looked like a shooting star turned into two dots of light, one flickering blue-gold and one flickering blue-purple. They got closer and closer until Rabbit could see what they were and she shrieked. “FOUR!”

Commander Peter Walter IV looked tired, but he was giving them a small smile. The Marvel lady was next to him as they gently landed, and she gave him a nudge. “I specifically promised to bring you to visit Rabbit.”

“I’m a girl now,” Rabbit said, suddenly shy.

“So I heard,” he said. Four's voice was kinda like she remembered, but also layered with something deeper. Less...finite.

“I wrote a song about you,” she said. “I called it ‘Commander Cosmo’ because that’s a cool superhero name and it was the name of your ship. We put it on an album. M-m-maybe I could sing it. Later.”

“I think she wants a hug.” Six tucked his hands in his pockets, meaning he was feeling shy too. 

The hug was a bit stiff and Four buzzed underneath his barely-a-spacesuit-anymore, but Rabbit clung to him. She’d held him as a _newborn_ , how could anything be more awkward than that? “I’m so sorry, Petes, I should have been more careful.”

“I’ve never blamed you for being kidnapped, so let that go.” Even though Six had already said that, hearing it from Four himself was a massive weight off her shoulders.

“Okay. Yes. Okay.” She hoped she wouldn’t get oil seeping from her eyes all over his clothes.

“I’d like to hear that song. Soon.” Then he let go of her and looked at Six. “I won’t be here long. But Captain Danvers told me you could maybe use some advice.”

“It’s good to meet you, Uncle.” Six started going for a handshake, but he ended up going in for a hug too. 

The Spine came up behind Rabbit and put an arm around her shoulders. She could hear the bouncy stomping of Zero close behind. She sang quietly enough that only her automaton brothers could hear. “ _I know I have a heart, it burns like a million suns_.”

**Author's Note:**

> How did Rabbit, the Spine, and Hatchworth record an album that more or less accurately reflects events in an alternate reality? *shrugs* Running on blue matter is weird. Or maybe Peter VI got a glimpse taking a wrong turn during one of his weekly trips to feed his giant extra-dimensional cat. Maybe Rav came over for tea and told them. Imagine either one telling the robots about the universe where they are just humans in face paint.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I love comments, if you have the inclination.


End file.
